False humility. This went down just about exactly as they (bammy and his cohorts in crime) intended it to go down.
This was a moment that showed the world Iran can be trusted, they are good guys, ready to play nice in the international community. You couldn't have scripted it better in Hollywood. (a-la "Wag The Dog") That's the problem, this was too perfect. The timing relative to the sanctions coming off, the number and type of boats (oddly enough no-one has mentioned weapons on board, were they unarmed?), even had a female sailor making a cameo.
The only mistake, if you can call it that, is that they apparently didn't quite get their story straight on which revision of the script they were going with:
Early on we heard one of the boats ran out of fuel and drifted. This with a boat listed as having greater than 250 nmi range on a trip of gee, just about 250 nmi. Yet the place they "ran out of gas" was only about 1/2 there. Problem with that story is the other boat, why didn't it simply tow the first boat along or at least keep them in international waters?
Then "the story" was one of the boats was disabled and drifted. Same basic problem as with the out of gas story - what about the second boat?
Now "the story" is they made a navigational error. As others have pointed out, these kind of small boat transits are planned extensively because you are in a relatively small craft on a big sea. So how many people would have to screw up the plan to put them in proximity of an Iranian island? I would guess a dozen or more ashore. Then once the transit started, two boats, two compasses, two sets of charts, two GPSes, at least a couple of people on each boat tracking their progress... Nope, I don't buy the "navigational error" story either. Requires too many mistakes at too many stages by too many people. Extremely unlikely.
How were the boats allowed to go on their way without repairs?
The problem I have with the GPS/Nav theory -— small boats like this probably shouldn’t be out of sight of land. They are designed for rivers primarily and only draw 3 ft of water. If there’s any kind of surface swell their 45 knot top speed can’t really be used.
They are also twin-engine water jets. I could see one engine running rough, but what about the other? One boat could have covered the other’s withdraw once the situation was recognized. Air cover would have guaranteed that.
This looks like another “stand down” order was given, only the Iranians instead of rendering assistance decided to treat it as an illegal border crossing and got the video humiliating the sailors, thus double-crossing their buddy Barak.